Saturday, July 30, 2016

Occasionally
this blog features writing by other space historians and figures.
During the next two weeks, I am proud and honored to present a
history of the Soviet Buran space shuttle by someone who knows an
awful lot about it. Here's
the dirt on everybody's favorite shuttle, by space historian Jay
Chladek:

A Brief History
of Soviet Space Shuttle Buran, Part
One (CLICK FOR MORE AFTER THE JUMP!)

Sunday, July 17, 2016

NASA image: "Mariner 4 image, the first close-up image ever taken of Mars. This shows an area
about 330 km across by 1200 km from limb to bottom of frame, centered at 37 N, 187 W.
The area is near the boundary of Elysium Planitia to the west and Arcadia Planitia to
the east. The hazy area barely visible above the limb on the left side of the image
may be clouds. This portion of the feature has been enhanced in image m04_01h to bring
out more of the haze-like features. The resolution of this image is roughly 5 km and
north is up.
(Mariner 4, frame 01D)"

More Space Myths
Busted: There Were Mars Missions Years Before Viking

I was reading an online article recently (source redacted) that
characterized the Vikings as the first robotic missions to visit
Mars. While the Vikings made the first successful landings (read:
returning useful data) upon the Red Planet, they were far from the
first spacecraft to explore our planetary neighbor.

Several efforts to investigate Mars had been made by both the United
States and the Soviet Union well over a decade before Viking 1 sent
back its first image (of its foot!) on July 20th, 1976.
This blog post seeks to survey these missions, and their results
(successful, or not).

Saturday, July 9, 2016

You should go there, it is so nice, Mars.
You should be
there, it's out of sight, Mars.
You should see it, it ain't so
high, Mars.
You should be there, up in the sky, Mars.

- Title track from Dexter Wansel’s Life On Mars LP, 1976

Throughout the 1970s, pop culture references to “life on Mars”
were inescapable. The late David Bowie sang about it on his album
Hunky Dory, and musician
Dexter Wansel even made a sci-fi funk album called Life On
Mars, released in 1976 (the year
of Viking). Science fiction, of course, had bandied about the
possibility of “little green men” on our neighboring planet for
decades.

But did Viking really discover life
on Mars, in any way, shape, or form? Did
the “little green men” exist on a microbial
level? This
debate continues to this day. Read
on, and make your decision:

Sunday, July 3, 2016

From NASA: "Taken by the Viking 1 lander shortly after it touched down on Mars, this
image is the first photograph ever taken from the surface of Mars. It
was taken on July 20, 1976." Image Credit: NASA

“Time and time again I repeat, ‘It’s incredible.’ And it
truly is. Nothing before or after can compare. It is transparent,
brilliant, boundless. An explorer would understand. We have stood on
the surface of Mars.” - The late Thomas A. “Tim” Mutch, leader
of the Viking Lander Imaging Team, discussing his reaction upon
seeing Viking 1’s first image

I can’t speak for others, but for me, the Viking program had the
biggest cultural impact on how I viewed planetary spaceflight. While
the Viking landers weren’t able to rove beyond their landing sites,
and couldn’t take cool “selfies” upon the Martian surface, the
images from school science books and the January 1977 issue of
National Geographic forever
made an impact on my mind: something from Earth had made it to a
neighboring planet, landed
successfully, and made its
home there permanently. Along
with the two Voyagers
and ESA’s Giotto, the Vikings fired my imagination, making it seem
as if the
Solar System was wholly explorable.